Last week the folks at CNET did a comparison of 15 online photo editors. I gave the list a brief glance and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to do photo editing on a Web site.
You, the readers, probably all have at least one high-end image editor on your system. That could be Adobe Photoshop or Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Then there are consumer level image editors like Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Paint Shop Pro. Those are definitely not the only editors out there, so if I have missed your favorite, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good tool.
My original thought was that the online photo editors just don’t apply to graphics pros since we have better tools on our systems. But there are some good, FREE, tools out there like Irfanview that can do a number of different adjustments on images. Yes, you need to pay a small amount if you use it commercially ($12 US or 10 Euros). But that wouldn’t apply to the typical home user. I’m sure I could find at least five to ten other tools that can make basic adjustments to images with little or no cost.
If you use an online image editor, you have to deal with the upload time of getting the image to the site. For many users, they won’t know to downsample the images before uploading so it will take longer than needed for most images. And if they know how to downsample, then they already have tool for editing the image.
Therefore, I want to hear from you. Do you use an online photo editor and why? Hey, nothing wrong with it, I just want to understand. If not you, do you know someone else who regularly uses such a site?
I haven’t yet broken down and installed the GIMP on my PortableApps, so I use an online paint program, called SumoPaint, when I’m away from home.
I like knowing what editors are out there so I can tell clients who have had me implement a CMS website for them … It is also useful for when I am using my ultra thin laptop (which doesn’t have a fancy editor license on it) and unexpectedly need to “demonstrate” what a change would do to a photo. I generally then come home and do the permanent change on my desktop machine.